Fewer & Further Press is pleased to announce the publication of Ed's son John Coletti's Same Enemy Rainbow. Same Enemy Rainbow is 30 pages, hand-sewn, and printed on laid paper in an edition of 200 copies, 40 of which are special editions.Schnozzes and When We Know by Ed Coletti
Copies can be purchased for $8, postpaid. Please visit the Fewer & Further Press site for an excerpt and cover image. Payments can be made through the site with Paypal.
The special editions are signed by the author and include a small double-sided broadside, for $10. If you would like to purchase a special edition, please contact the editor for availability.
If you would like to pay by check, make check payable to Jess Mynes, and mail it to:
Jess Mynes
121 Lockes Village Rd
Wendell, MA 01379
Thank you very much.
Jess Mynes, editor
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Poetry Bailout Will Restore Confidence of Readers
By Charles Bernstein in Harper's September 26, 2008
From a statement read at an event marking the release of Best American Poetry 2008, held last night at The New School, in New York City. David Lehman is the series editor of Best American Poetry, and Robert Polito is the director of the writing program at The New School.
Chairman Lehman, Secretary Polito, distinguished poets and readers—I regret having to interrupt the celebrations tonight with an important announcement. As you know, the glut of illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems is clogging the literary arteries of the West. These debt-ridden poems threaten to infect other areas of the literary sector and ultimately to topple our culture industry.
Charles Bernstein’s most recent collection of poetry is Girly Man. His poem “Pompeii” appeared in the August issue of Harper’s Magazine; his essay “Wet verse at The New Yorker” appeared in the November 1989 issue.
Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets.
Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance.
Illiquid poetry assets are choking off the flow of imagination that is so vital to our literature. When the literary system works as it should, poetry and poetry assets flow to and from readers and writers to create a productive part of the cultural field. As toxic poetry assets block the system, the poisoning of literary markets has the potential to damage our cultural institutions irreparably.
As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems.
The risks poets have taken have been too great; the aesthetic negligence has been profound. The age of decadence must come to an end with the imposition of oversight and regulation on poetry composition and publishing practices.
We are convinced that once we have removed these troubled and distressed poems from circulation, our cultural sector will stabilize and readers will regain confidence in American literature. We estimate that for the buyout to be successful, we will need to remove from circulation all poems written after 1904.
This will be a fresh start, a new dawn of a new day. Without these illiquid poems threatening to overwhelm readers, we will be able to create a literary culture with a solid aesthetic foundation.
I’m Charles Bernstein, and I approved this message.
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Foreleg Eardrums
by Amy Trussell
Stop and put your shirt on the fence and look heavenward.
They say there is a hexagon at the top of Saturn’s pole,
though your naked eye doesn’t register it. Trust it anyway,
like your affection for another person, embedded
with a type of gem not found inside the earth’s dark muscles.
You cannot bear it away to keep forever.
It will not melt away on the tongue like mousse from Maison du Chocolate,
But softens the blow of any tumble and pops the rib back into place
when the heart is large and broken.
It sets sail with a full mast,
and it’s anchor does not break coral.
Listen, the grasshoppers hear your tale of survival
with the delicate eardrums on their forelegs.
They invite you to come through the wormwood,
the sprouting hemlock, and the wreckage of Fall still
lying in the yard.
Release strife and be glad of the bees’ return,
their hives oozing with royal jelly, oblivious to cell phones.
Dig the afternoon when the gods of light come on like honey,
nodding at your delicate capture and release fishing.
When you get home, throw the black drape off of the piano
and pound the keys as if it were your last song, or your first.
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